Demoing the Record Feed block to someone, did not go well

[socceronly]

I was showing someone how to use the site, they are taking over the organization.   It was all good.... until I showed them the Record Feed block on the front page. 

Created a Page, a Database for News & Events. All good.   Then I showed the record feed block dropped into the front page.....

Done. They are looking for someone to create a WordPress site. 

I get the questions.  

What is the bullet for? 
Why does the author and time posted repeat?
How do you remove the comments and rating?

They just want Thumbnail, Title and/or Teaser.

😞

 

 

 

[Morrigan]

So not sure which block you showed them but its completely doable but not out of the box. It would just be a custom block template. Super easy to do but not something that is just available.

[socceronly]

Yeah, but I think custom anything and no paid plug ins are what they want.   All of those eventually break.... (not always of course)

They are not wrong.  It is a very peculiar output and something more 'normal' should be on offer out of the box. 

I think I will convince them to simplify the site and just use the article view in a single column with other stuff in the sidebar.

To get back to zero with WP with what you get out of the box here would be insane.... and talk about plug ins not working down the road.....

[Morrigan]

Just now, socceronly said:

Yeah, but I think custom anything and no paid plug ins are what they want.   All of those eventually break.... (not always of course)

They are not wrong.  It is a very peculiar output and something more 'normal' should be on offer out of the box. 

I think I will convince them to simplify the site and just use the article view in a single column with other stuff in the sidebar.

To get back to zero with WP with what you get out of the box here would be insane.... and talk about plug ins not working down the road.....

I'm not saying paid. I customize all of my own block templates to work the way I want. So for example:

 

Last I checked this was the default Articles/Pages block:

 

 

[socceronly]

Those look great! Good job.

I think the worry is that they don't want to mess with anything, and when the next people come along they can just take over.

Even the stock template didn't survive an upgrade to 4.5 from whatever version it was running on. 

Not saying nothing should ever change. I just understand that they don't want something they need to customize. 

The Record Feed view is really weird.   

[Morrigan]

I mean all of my templates survive upgrades but I choose to do most of it in CSS because the data will never change so the most "updated" things you normally need to do is through CSS but only if you've completely customized it.

The above are using other IPS blocks that I just made minor customizations of DATA for myself.

[socceronly]

This is the view I am talking about

The bullets add nothing, the username and time posted are repeated, Comments, views and ratings.... just are not needed.

You want to get people to go to the content.  Some combination or lack thereof Thumbnail, Title, Teaser, Date, Username. 

 

[Morrigan]

So that is just a version of that view. Its barely wide enough for it to think its horizontal. This can be changed to the above one that I mentioned as being default with a ten second template change and no issues with upgrades.

I do agree some of the horizontal versus sidebar templates do need a review though.

[CoffeeCake]

3 hours ago, socceronly said:

Done. They are looking for someone to create a WordPress site. 

What is your involvement after they take over? Are you being compensated? Moving on to other things? Is this work for hire?

It seems like the decisions made by the people taking over for you, no matter how awfully ill-informed they may be, are not your problems to worry about. I've been in a position where people who are used to using hammers insist on smacking screws with them no matter what. If they're thinking Wordpress is interchangeable with IPS, leave them to it.

Put your recommendation in writing, tell them why IPS is a better model and leave them to it. Good luck with Wordpress!

Edited February 2, 2021 by Paul E.

[socceronly]

15 hours ago, Morrigan said:

So that is just a version of that view. Its barely wide enough for it to think its horizontal. This can be changed to the above one that I mentioned as being default with a ten second template change and no issues with upgrades.

I do agree some of the horizontal versus sidebar templates do need a review though.

Well, it is that easy if you know what to do, and if it is that easy why on earth have they not provided such a thing?

Think of it this way.  We can create databases, and there are lots of reasons to create more than one for different kinds of content. Let's say you make two.

In the default mode of this system your front page cannot display access to both of those in even a remotely appealing way.   Your front page will look like two columns of the above.

For any content that is visual, not having a thumbnail in a record feed is content discovery suicide. 

Edited February 2, 2021 by socceronly

[Morrigan]

Out of the box, I can agree but there are SO MANY ways you can use pages it becomes a task determining what are the best defaults.

Saying "it looks like garbage fix it" really doesn't help. Especially when the default fields for a new record are literally just title and content. While you can use a record image record images aren't required and that becomes a general back and forth battle.

Do I believe there need to be more default blocks that integrate some of the DEFAULT things that IPS allows for? Yes. Yes I do.

Do I believe that saying "just do better" helps? No, no I don't.

I would recommend, at minimum adding some examples of blocks (from wordpress that is so easy) and request that similar blocks be implemented. You're asking for a visual update without providing any visual evidence.

[Jordan Miller]

19 hours ago, socceronly said:

I was showing someone how to use the site, they are taking over the organization.   It was all good.... until I showed them the Record Feed block on the front page. 

Created a Page, a Database for News & Events. All good.   Then I showed the record feed block dropped into the front page.....

Done. They are looking for someone to create a WordPress site. 

I get the questions.  

What is the bullet for? 
Why does the author and time posted repeat?
How do you remove the comments and rating?

They just want Thumbnail, Title and/or Teaser.

😞

 

 

 

Hey @socceronly - check out my forum Exhale. Are they looking for something similar?

https://www.breatheheavy.com/exhale/
 

[socceronly]

10 hours ago, Morrigan said:

Out of the box, I can agree but there are SO MANY ways you can use pages it becomes a task determining what are the best defaults.

Saying "it looks like garbage fix it" really doesn't help. Especially when the default fields for a new record are literally just title and content. While you can use a record image record images aren't required and that becomes a general back and forth battle.

Do I believe there need to be more default blocks that integrate some of the DEFAULT things that IPS allows for? Yes. Yes I do.

Do I believe that saying "just do better" helps? No, no I don't.

I would recommend, at minimum adding some examples of blocks (from wordpress that is so easy) and request that similar blocks be implemented. You're asking for a visual update without providing any visual evidence.

I don't think I am simply saying "Just do better".  I am saying this output is unlike any CMS out there for displaying a list records in a block.  

Imagine something simpler.   A website that has a single database with articles in it.   Unless that front page is set to the article page with the DB embedded in it set to Article view....  well what are your options? 

If on your front landing page you want your recent articles in a column, gallery images in another say, twitter feed ect....   any combination of perfectly normal things.... that article block will not remotely look like any website on the Internet doing something similar.  It's just not how articles on any system I can think of are displayed in a block.   Thumbnail, Title or Teaser.   Or if images are not required in the record, just the title and or teaser would be better, cleaner and simpler. 

 

 

 

[Morrigan]

But you're putting "just imagine" I know of fifty different sites that do it fifty different ways. Its not as easy as a just imagine situation. Can you not provide some examples?

[CoffeeCake]

10 minutes ago, socceronly said:

I am saying this output is unlike any CMS out there for displaying a list records in a block.  

My guess is that the issue you see here is that this is forum software that's had a bunch of things added onto it over its lifetime. It follows the legacy footprints of the tabular nature of forum software that came before it, and hasn't quite departed that in its default theme. Think about how other discussion/forum solutions look that have gained some traction, such as Discourse? An honest, and valid assessment of the out of the box functionality and the overall look and feel.

This, coupled with very small number of themes that can be purchased when comparing at what's available for something like Wordpress, and there is certainly a barrier to achieving the look and feel you might be after and might be much more easily attainable using much more popular software like Wordpress. Where IPS' strengths are lie in the community management space. Does your organization need a community or a web portal or both?

Unless it's in the "needs a community" or both category, this platform probably isn't the best choice. Go with what the powers that be are telling you.

Could you pixel for pixel replicate something that might take a few mouseclick installs in Wordpress on IPS? Absolutely. Could you do it better? Yes. Will there be more effort involved? Yes. I'd encourage you to think about what your requirements and end goals are and then evaluate the various options out there to see what checks off the most boxes for you in the short and longer term. What resources are available to you? What's the budget?

Consider how you might leverage a mix of platforms, such as IPS for the forum functionality and Wordpress for the static content if it makes sense to do so. Plenty of folks do this.

You'll find the opposite situation to be the case when you find strong contenders in the content management space. They lack in the discussion areas, but excel in the presentation.

Out of the box, IPS Pages/database content isn't going to look pretty. It's going to be functional, and you can theme and extend it however you'd like.

[socceronly]

12 hours ago, Morrigan said:

But you're putting "just imagine" I know of fifty different sites that do it fifty different ways. Its not as easy as a just imagine situation. Can you not provide some examples?

In the space of community software, the default format makes more sense (though i think repeating the author and time posted isn't necessary)  That is if you have many different people contributing articles say.  But when  it is the site owner/single author the repeated username and profile image are repetitive.   Imagine if you had multiple databases with different content types on the front page in say three columns..... that would be a lot of profile pic icons...LOL 🙂

What examples do you want?  .  It's not about what I want, I just want it to be simpler, an option show just the record title say in whatever the Theme font settings are.

People should keep in mind I am posting this as a result of recommending IPS to people.  I think the whole suite is greatly underrated and it is a colossal task to take on breadth of functionality they have. 

I would convert the entire internet into Wikipedia if I could....lol.  Ok maybe not that bad....

[Morrigan]

1 minute ago, socceronly said:

People should keep in mind I am posting this as a result of recommending IPS to people.  I think the whole suite is greatly underrated and it is a colossal task to take on breadth of functionality they have. 

I totally agree. I'm not arguing. I'm just asking for examples. Whatever you want. I posted examples of ways I USE Pages because that's my custom version. I totally agree its underrated and also that it can be simpler.

I'm not sure I agree with a line by line list method but I totally can see it as being a valid way to provide content without repetition. I was only asking for examples because hopefully people like @Jordan Invision can come in here see the awesome blocks and see if they can be included ASAP!

[Rikki]

We have some ideas on making blocks and pages more flexible, though they are in their early stages. As things stand right now, custom templates are your best approach, but I certainly hope we can provide something more intuitive and robust in future.

[socceronly]

Maybe in the future there will be a blocks only release, and call it Block Party!  

[CoffeeCake]

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, socceronly said:

Maybe in the future there will be a blocks only release, and call it Block Party!  

I like where your head is at 😎